Pitotable airplanes didn't return in Grand Theft Auto IV. Some do exist in Francis International Airport, but none are controllable. This was recieved negatively by the fans, and multiple mods featuring pilotable airplanes have been released since then. According to Rockstar, the world of IV simply wasn't capable to support airplanes.

It was revealed in the debut trailer that aeroplanes will return in Grand Theft Auto V. There seem to be at least seven different airplanes until now.

Contents

Description

Design

Aeroplanes are naturally aircraft that rely on their propellers or jet engines for horizontal speed, generating lift using their wings in the process. Controls while on the ground, however, are often heavy and are only effective at low speeds due to their weight and little traction from the landing gears. As such, aeroplanes often require a stretch of flat surface in order to take off or land, making the presence of airport runways in games they appear in useful in this regard. The only exception to the rule is the Hydra in GTA San Andreas, which is capable of both conventional and vertical take off, flying, and landing by the simple act of adjusting the direction of its jet thrusters.(VTOL)

Since its introduction in GTA III, aeroplanes possess a wide range of controls: Including working ailerons, elevators, and rudders, allowing it to roll, pitch, and yaw, and retractable landing gears in GTA San Andreas, which impacts their aerodynamics and speed. In their initial appearances in GTA III and GTA Vice City, certain aerobatic stunts (i.e. barrel rows or loops) are very difficult to execute (likely because the aeroplanes featured in these games, the Dodo and Skimmer, are underpowered), a limitation rectified in GTA San Andreas, which allows aeroplanes to perform said stunts and are even showcased during Flying School, where a number of aeroplane stunts must be executed by the player.

Damage

Initially, aeroplanes in GTA III and GTA Vice City are relatively resistent to damage, capable of hitting solid objects head on at full speed and sustaining only the same amount of damage a road vehicle may have from a similar crash. Like helicopters, aeroplanes will also cease to function outright in water if they do not have pontoons (i.e. the Skimmer).

Damage to airplanes was heavily improved in GTA San Andreas, including realism in the damage engine of aeroplanes by allowing certain portions of a plane to malfunction and weaken controls or engine power (indicated by smoke and flapping aeroplane parts) if they lightly hit an object, and having an aircraft explode on impact if flown head on to any solid object or water. Also, planes can catch fire as a result of heavy damage, and, like most other vehicles, this is a sign of the aircraft's imminent destruction, although aeroplanes can sustain fire for a much longer period of time before exploding. Despite these refinements, the models of all aeroplanes still remain generally unchanged despite heavy damage or high-speed collisions (apart from flapping parts).

In GTA Vice City Stories, the last GTA game to feature controllable airplanes before V, damage differed between the two pilotable airplanes: The Skimmer is considerably weak, sometimes destroyed at first impact with any building, while the Biplane might easily stand such impact and suffer almost no damage. None of them has semi-realistic degradation like San Andreas.

A Shamal is seen with one of it's engines burning in a screenshot for Grand Theft Auto V, meaning that realistic damage will most certainly come back.

Trivia

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, if you fly over a no fly zone such as Area 69 (or the Easter Basin Naval Station during Vertical Bird) in an aeroplane and a SAM missile is fired at you, your airplane will rapidly beep as a missile warning sign. You will also see a small red blip on your minimap so you know how close the missile is to your airplane, so you can time your evasive maneuvers.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has a unique and sometimes irritating random factor in that planes will occasionally fall out of the sky and crash, whether in rural areas or in the middle of a city. The crashes generally occur close enough to Carl to cause damage to (or often destroy) the vehicle he may be driving in.